It's A Routine . . . Home Run

By Tom Callahan

In just two baseball games last week, chosen entirely at random, 21 home runs were hit by Don Mattingly, Mike Pagliarulo, Cecil Fielder, Willie Upshaw, Lloyd Moseby, Ron Kittle, Dave Winfield (2), Willie Horton (3), Rocky Colavito (2), Dick Allen, Roy McMillan, Dick McAuliffe, Bob Allison, Catfish Hunter, Orlando Cepeda, Boog Powell and Henry Aaron. Even though (or maybe especially because) 13 of them were in an Old Timers game, reports are proliferating that something may be up with the baseball.

Since neither game took place in the U.S. -- one was in Canada, the other in a truly remote baseball region, the District of Columbia -- nobody is exactly sure which of the Big Bang theories applies to the question of the day. How could 37-year-old Giant Infielder Chris Speier have one grand slam in 16 years and then suddenly hit two in five days? Other curiosities: Boston's Wade Boggs, who never dispenses more than eight homers a season, has 13 already without neglecting his batting average (.380). One week from the midyear All- Star break, Jim Dwyer of the Orioles has already equaled his season high of nine; with four, the Mets' Rafael Santana has brought his career total to seven. Strong men like Jack Clark (23) of the Cardinals and Ozzie Virgil (20) of the Braves have speeded up their conveyors, but even the puniest wraiths have been hitting balls across county lines.

"Don't take a baseball to bed with you," advises Detroit Manager Sparky Anderson. "It will keep you up all night." The aging Tiger Bill Madlock, 36, hit three home runs in one game last week. "One was the hardest ball I ever hit in my life," says Madlock, a four-time National League batting champion discarded by the Dodgers this spring. "I didn't really notice it so much in the National League, though I do remember a ball ((Los Angeles Righthand Batter)) Steve Sax hit while falling down that banged off the rightfield wall in St. Louis." He thinks "the machine's wrapping the outer half of the ball too tightly."

Of course, the baseball manufacturers -- Rawlings since 1977 -- have been insisting for decades that the only constant is the ball: 5 to 5 1/4 oz., 9 to 9 1/4 in. circumference, 108 stitches and a carefully monitored bounceability. "It's the same cows," Rawlings President Bob Burrows likes to say, although stretch marks from old pregnancies have made the company prefer steers. Before 1974 the exotic innards of a baseball -- Portuguese cork coated with Malaysian rubber (the "pill" of poetry) and wrapped in 300 yds. of woolly yarn -- were covered by horsehide.

Last year the major leagues yielded a record 3,813 home runs. If the ball is not the reason homers are now up 22% (2,201 compared with 1,801 in 1986), what is? The explanation both exemplified and espoused by Oakland Phenom Mark McGwire is that hitters are cultivating more muscle. The 6-ft. 5-in., 220-lb. rookie first baseman hit five homers in two games recently and another in the third, his 28th. "Six days a week in the off-season, I lift weights," says McGwire, "something ballplayers once were told never to do. We're just getting stronger." And more polite. "I'm not the type of person who stands back and beholds them. I leave the bat and start running. Some have gone fairly far, I guess."

The unchangeability of wood is another issue. Brooks Robinson got the last hit of his career with a bat that had been mounted over his mantel for years. He took it down one day and thought he heard a single rattling around inside. But lighter bats with thinner handles have increased bat speed. "All other things being equal," explains Physicist Peter Brancazio, "if you change from a 33-oz. bat to a 30 and swing with the same energy, the ball will go six to seven feet farther."

Atmospheric conditions are also being investigated (the Chernobyl Theory). The Power of Voodoo Theory involves Haitian hand stitchers with some sort of unspoken vendetta against pitchers. Looking back to the dead-ball era before 1920, historians see some vague correlation between the gambling scandal of 1919 and the drug scandal of two years ago. Others just think the pitching is ^ rotten. "There are too many minor-league pitchers in the major leagues," says Joe Bauman, 65, who had 72 homers and 224 RBIs in the Longhorn League (class C) in 1954 and still never made it to the big leagues. "A lot of today's starters aren't very quick, and it seems the relievers can't bring it at all."

Not a few grizzled baseball men have been muttering, like Angels Manager Gene Mauch: "Our game is getting ridiculous." The old umpire Jocko Conlan, 84, says, "Players like Ruth, Gehrig, Williams, Musial were hitting a baseball. Now they're hitting a piece of lightning." Even American League President Bobby Brown, taking his cuts before an Old Timers game, admitted that a "few balls went a hell of a lot farther than I was entitled to hit them." After a 22-7 game some weeks ago involving three grand slams, Chicago Cub Outfielder Brian Dayett was put so much in mind of a sandlot that he said, "I thought my mom would call me home when it got dark." The kids have been breaking a lot of windows this year.

With reporting by Lawrence Mondi/New York